Chapter I · SEXUAL INSTINCT IN WOMAN

Sexual emotions are normally more powerful in man than in woman.

On the other hand, woman’s sexual nature, because of her biological function of motherhood (nature, of course, makes no distinction between actual and potential) is more diversified in its manifestations. It is less dominated by a powerful urge that seeks specific expression, less centered upon the immediate goal of concrete sexual experience, and is instinctively more concerned with the mate as a companion and protector, with children as “flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood,” and with the home as a haven of safety.

This not a question of choice or will, but is due to the character of woman’s physiological being, with its highly organized nervous system. The peculiar development of her sympathetic organization, which is responsible for her more sensitive emotional nature, also governs the particular tendencies of her love life.

Because of her physiological structure, which is responsible for the psychological reactions peculiar to woman, and not vice versa, it is inevitable that this should be so. Sexual conservatism and quiescence are demanded by the responsibilities of motherhood, whether actual or potential. Of course, as our social environment is far from a natural world, there are many modifications in sexual conduct in all its phases. Basically, however, woman is sexually conservative, comparatively passive, but nevertheless possesses a sexual organization more highly ramified than that of man, and with different reactions and different ways of manifesting itself.

Man’s sexual nature is more centered upon the love object from the standpoint of sexual experience, more ego-centric, more dynamic.

This phenomenon of differentiation of sexual temperament in the two sexes is not peculiar to the human race, but extends throughout the entire animal kingdom. It is epitomized, however inadequately for our purpose, in the axiom that among all organized beings, the male pursues the female of its choice.

The case of pathologically hysterical women may seem to contradict this contention. But this concerns morbid types, which are exceptional. Incidentally, hysteria tends to prove absence of control of the superior centers which rule the sexual instincts (Clouston). As has been widely observed, the manifestation of a more intense sensuality in woman, or the presence of abnormal eroticism, coincides with the appearance of criminal tendencies.

In Messalina and Agrippina, (the mother of Nero), and countless others less classical, the excessive life of the senses has been associated with no little ferocity. These types seem to be congenital criminals, irresponsible, though often brilliant. In all of the women of this category, as evidenced by numerous examples cited by Lombroso and Ferrero, the vehemence of the passions even begins to assert itself before puberty. Their social life commences with the dawn of sensuality. They have a stronger inclination toward the masculine pattern, and a more intense curiosity than normal women. Probably for the same reason they accommodate themselves more easily to polygamy.

WOMAN’S EMOTIONAL NATURE

It has not been sufficiently emphasized that in woman the sympathetic or involuntary nervous system, which controls the vegetative and sensitive life, is more highly developed than in man. This is a physiological necessity, as woman has additional organs, the breasts, womb, ovaries, and associated organs not existing in man. As woman has more organs concealed in the pelvis, with a greater complexity of function, her sympathetic nerves are necessarily more numerous.

It is mainly due to this elaborate sympathetic system that women feel more keenly the emotional side of life. They are more subject to fear, shock, and fright, and more easily aroused to joy or sorrow. Their affections are deeper, and their grief more intense.

The sympathetic nervous system regulates the tears that are shed in grief, the salivary and gastric secretions that are checked in fright, as well as the milk-flow that is arrested, increased or altered under the influence of terror, or maternal love, as the case may be.

It is also due to the influence of this sympathetic system over the calibre of the blood-vessels that women blush more readily. Moreover, blushing is most pronounced at the time that the pelvic organs begin their rapid development with the onset of puberty.

The ancients attributed hysteria, a nervous and mental disturbance peculiar to women, to causes within the womb. And undoubtedly there is a connection; not that the disorder is actually seated in the pelvic regions, but these organs form part of a reflex arc to the brain centers through the sympathetic system. In hysteria the system is probably in a state of hyperesthesia, or over-sensitiveness.

It is also significant to note that while woman’s brain is narrower than that of man, and smaller in the motor centers, therefore exhibiting less energy and force, it is more voluminous in the posterior part. In other words, women are more long-headed than men, and it is the posterior area that is concerned with the manifestation of the feelings and emotions which are stronger in women.

Furthermore, this posterior part of the brain (the somatic sensory area of Flechsig) is related by means of the sympathetic nervous system with the organs of the chest and abdomen. Again, another connecting link with the emotional life, as we know of the relationship of the heart action and respiration, as well as organs of the abdomen, to feeling and the emotions.

The feminine sex is pre-eminently the affectionate sex. Physical excitements provoke reflexes more readily and more strongly in woman. Her emotionalism is more demonstrative under all circumstances than man’s.

This tendency, of course, has its destructive and anti-social as well as constructive and social sides. Among uncultured or primitive women—including modern women in whom the primitive impulses dominate—their emotional lengths lead them to extremes that few men can equal. It has been observed that in countries where enemies are tortured, the women surpass the men in cruelty.

Among the Dakota Indians, old men captives were delivered up to the women who took special pleasure in subjecting them to all sorts of tortures. Bertillon has presented many proofs of the same kind borrowed from the life of other savage peoples. Lombroso instances terrible examples of this kind of ferocity in women who had taken part in political revolution, as well as in women of the criminal world.

On the other hand, we also see feminine sympathy and helpfulness reach the noblest proportions even when, perhaps, it may be altogether unlooked for. Among the same savages who break out intermittently in acts of barbarism, travellers and explorers have cited numerous instances of gentleness and goodness. Stanley, Livingstone and others have attested to this trait.

STRENGTH OF SEXUAL IMPULSE

While the strength of the sexual impulse in woman is subject to a wide range of variation, there is no doubt in the mind of the serious student of sexual phenomena that its normal manifestation is quite invariably a factor to be reckoned with.

In modern times, outside the rational sex educational movement, the notion has prevailed that the sex impulse in woman, at least in “good”, “respectable” women, is a negligible quantity. She was never supposed to evidence any sexual feeling, erotic desire or passion.

Countless women celibatists in the Church and pious sisters in the cloisters have given conclusive evidence, by their actions and lives, notwithstanding their asceticism and religious exaltation, of the potency of the sexual instinct.

The cloister-rules of the Middle Ages prescribed venesection for nuns as well as monks, for the purpose of controlling the sexual urges. Among other less drastic measures employed were narcotics and fasts. Certain cloisters, in order to reduce temptation, have not permitted women to enter their ranks before the age of forty years.

Max Reinhardt’s elaborate version of “The Miracle”, which has had such a tremendous vogue in recent years, both in Europe and America, is based on a legend dealing with the irrepressible desires of the flesh. If the religious devotee who witnesses this spectacular pantomime is entirely lost in the magnificent pageant of a medieval religious atmosphere and ritual, certainly the psychological student is no less carried away by the realistic portrayal of suppressed desires, at times highly symbolized, at other times stark and unmasked. The erotic nature of the Nun’s promptings and feeling are set forth as faithfully as Freud himself could have done it. It is a masterpiece in depicting the conflicts engendered between natural desires, or biological impulses, on the one hand, and ideals based on repression of these impulses on the other. The sensuous body of Megildis, the Grey Nun, unconsciously revolted against the decree of a mind dedicated to celibacy and austerity—and the desires of the body triumphed while they lasted. After seven years (note the mystical “seven” which appears and reappears in all religious, mythological and legendary forms) the human appetites are appeased, and the Nun returns repentant to the cloister.

Even the act of ultra-fervent devotion has its significance to the initiated. Maudsley has emphasized the influence of physiological conditions upon religious feeling. He shows in this connection that the ecstasy of such devout women as Catherine of Sienna and the holy Teresa, when they imagined themselves visited by Christ, who “embraced each of them as His bride”, was nothing but a vicarious sexual orgasm. This sort of expression, caused by the sight of the nude male figure reproduced in all its normal proportions on the cross, is a more natural consequence among young women of a sensitive and nervous temperament than is generally realized.

In the Middle Ages, the sexual impulse normal to womanhood was perhaps better appreciated than it has been in later times. Luther gave utterance to the opinion prevalent in his day when he wrote: “It is just as impossible for a woman to do without man as for a man to do without woman.” In his treatise “About Married Life”, he expressed himself in this candid fashion: “If a potent wife has an impotent husband and cannot openly procure another, and does not for the sake of her honor wish to do it, she should address him as follows: ‘My dear husband, you are my debtor and have deceived me and my young life and endangered my honor and eternal welfare; before God we are not married; allow me therefore to enter a secret marriage with your brother or nearest friend.’” It is the husband’s duty, Luther maintained, to comply with her demand, and if he does not wish to do so, he must not be angry if his wife should run away from him. (K. Hagen: Deutschlands lit. u. relig. Verhältnisse im Reformationszeitalter.)

Luther also summed up the subject, as a natural phenomenon, in these words: “He who wishes to restrain the impulse of nature and not to allow it free play, as nature will and must, what does he do but this: to insist that nature shall not be nature, that fire shall not burn, that water shall not be wet, that man shall neither eat, drink, nor sleep.”

Buddha, who fought out the conflict between desires and the will to renunciation, and therefore ought to know about it, delivered himself in this wise: “The sexual impulse is stronger than the ankus with which the wild elephant is controlled, it is hotter than flame, it is like unto an arrow driven into the spirit of man.”

Mantegazza stresses the point that in the female sexual desire is very rarely accompanied by pains analogous to those which occur in man, in whom sexual excitement manifests itself in painful tension of the testicles and the seminal vesicles, or in spasmodic, long-continued priapism.

Sergi, with somewhat hectic imagination, communicated his thoughts on the subject to Lombroso, as follows: “The normal woman loves to be flattered and wooed by man, but yields to his sexual desires only like an animal at the sacrifice. It is well known how much pains must be taken, how many caresses must be expended, before a woman will yield with pleasure to a man’s desires, and will share his sexual passion. Without the employment of these means, a woman remains cold and gives as little satisfaction as she feels. There are girls who are quite obtuse to the joys of love, and either resist energetically a man’s approaches, or yield to him passively, without ardor and without enthusiasm. It is well known, also, that among the lower races of mankind, means are employed to stimulate sexual sensibility in women, means that seem to amount to torture; and that the male with the same end in view, undergoes the most painful operations, from which it is apparent that the slight sexual sensibility of women in these lower grades of civilization is fully recognized.” And again, “If a normal woman marries for love, she hides that love deep in her heart; she often complains later that in her husband the love-fervor of the first days still continues; the very moderate sexual needs of the wife form a natural and most valuable check to the much more powerful passion of the male.”

Considering woman’s function in the realm of sex, her relative conservatism is based on very fundamental grounds. As Professor Erb has pointed out, woman is the principal sufferer in the process of reproduction. For the most part, with a cruelty that baffles the processes of the rational or philosophic mind, nature has condemned woman to a far more difficult position than man in the intercourse of the sexes and in the preservation of the species. In her biologic role, she has been overpowered and forced by man. She is always compelled to make the most severe sacrifices for the sake of the new generation, first when the new being is germinating within her womb, later in the throes of parturition, and finally when the helpless mite of humanity is entrusted to her maternal care. And only too often she fails to receive the respect and protection due to her for the performance of these difficult functions. When everything is considered, it is fortunate that as a rule the young woman who has never come into intimate contact with the male appears to be endowed with a relatively weak sexual urge.

The sexual impulse in normally constituted individuals, as Kisch states, is by no means constant in its intensity. Apart from the temporary indifference resulting from sexual gratification, and apart from the decline in the impulse that sometimes occurs after prolonged continence, the mode of life is a factor of very great influence. The urbanite who is continually reminded of sexual matters, and subjected to greater erotic stimulus, is quite inevitably more disposed than the countryman to sexual excitement. A sedentary and sheltered mode of life, a diet composed too largely of animal food and highly seasoned condiments, have a stimulating action on the sexual life.

In the woman, the sexual impulse is stronger just after menstruation, and during the period it may also be more than usually pronounced. In neuropathic women this increase of excitement may occur in a pathological degree.

Sexual desire in woman, it is generally agreed, outlasts the active sexual life; that is, the erotic impulse continues to manifest itself after the cessation of menstruation, when the possibility of conception has passed. It appears, therefore, that sexual desire is not necessarily dependent upon ovulation.

Probably no other individual has written so extensively and at the same time so wisely of sex matters as Havelock Ellis, who speaks of the differential characters of the sexual impulse in the female as follows:

“In courtship, woman plays a more passive part than man; in woman the physiological mechanism of the sexual processes is more complicated, the orgasm develops more deliberately; the sexual impulse in woman needs more frequently to be actively stimulated; the culmination of sexual activity is attained later in life than in the life of man; the strength of sexual desire in woman becomes greater after she has entered upon regular sexual intercourse. Women bear sexual excesses better than men; the sexual sphere is larger and more widely diffused in women than in men; finally, in woman the sexual impulse exhibits a distinct tendency to periodic exacerbations (malignity or violence of disease), and it is in any case much more variable than in man.”

Ellis further maintains that the source of erotic pleasure in the case of the male lies in activity, but in the female in the passive state, in the experience of loving compulsion, as it were, and he holds that sexual subordination is a necessary element in the sexual enjoyment of women.